E-SPEAIT / Aleksandr Voronkov

Two opposite examples of ergonomics/usability/HCI Sometimes the best way to illustrate the value of design is through examples of bad design. Good design most probably will go unnoticed and will stay invisible. However, if design is confusing, frustraiting or just too bad it will definitely annoy you. Picture 1: Enter your phone number [1] It is definitely funny to see these example of bad UI, but what if poorly designed user interface and wrong usage of technology could lead into huge disasters? The Space Shuttle Columbia Burned Up Because of PowerPoint After a piece of debris hit the space shuttle Columbia during launch on January 16, 2003, NASA had two weeks to prepare it for re-entry. Engineers were called to assess the danger, and after reading their reports, NASA decided that everything was just fine. Picture 2: Death by PowerPoint. The Slide that killed [3] So how did the experts so badly underestimate the damage to the shuttle? What did the most advanced space agency in the wor

To start with, it does not really matter where you are from and who you are, the very first thing you need to do to become an IT professional is to start loving the technology. When you do something you love, you do it better. First of all, I do believe that the most crucial skill for the IT professional is to be able to retrieve the right information. And I am not joking when saying "Googling skills are important". However, it is not about knowing how to open Google Search, it is about knowing how to split up your task on small pieces and find the answer in the Internet. Because of the technological progress and evolution of the media, most of the stuff can be already found in the Internet. You just need to know what to Google. Picture 1: Google Search [1] Since I have already started talking about technological progress, one of the skills IT specialist should have is Adaptability. The IT landscape is evolving at a pace never seen before. Most probably, some of the stuff tha

Have you ever asked yourself why people enjoy conflicts so much? Unfortunately, I can't answer to this question properly, because I am not a psychologist. But what I can say for sure is that people  are often intrigued by conflict and find the subject very entertaining.  Conflict between two people often causes an interesting outcome, and the people are often quite interesting.  Without conflict stories would be boring, drama would be boring and life would be boring.  One of the reasons why people enjoy conflicts is that people enjoy arguing with each other.   Just imagine if you add an a nonymity to all this. Actually... you don't need to imagine anything. It is already existent and called Internet. Of course, it is virtually impossible to remain 100% anonymous on the Internet, however, in most cases "criminals" don't have any consequences.  In other words, online communication provides tons of possibilities to express yourself in an online message. Usually commu

Copyleft licenses stand in contrast to permissive licenses, which tend to have few restrictions on use of the licensed code. They also don’t have any such code-sharing requirement, so the “open source-ness” does not necessarily persist to the derivative work. That is a feature or a bug, depending on how you look at it. Picture 1: Copyleft All Wrongs Reversed :D [1] Strong Copyleft: Under a strong copyleft license like GPL, if you redistribute a program that includes GPL code written by others, you must make your entire program available under GPL.  That includes any linked libraries or other components of the program. This is a crucial point for any software development projects in view of the strategies that should be considered and employed.  Examples of licenses that fall into this category include GPL v2 and GPL v3, as well as the Affero GPL License (AGPL). Weak Copyleft: Weak copyleft licenses also obligate users to release their changes. However, this requirement applies to a nar